Crash
by screaming-poetically
Summary: His father told him lots of things, but he never told him how to prepare for something like this. Flackcentric.


**Title:** Crash  
**Summary:** His father told him lots of things, but he never told him how to prepare for something like this. Flack-centric.  
**Prompt:** Mention of daughter / boys.  
**Disclaimer:** The names of all characters contained herein are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS and Alliance Atlantis. No infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.  
**A/N:** I wrote this fic on request for lj user"charmingeyes" on LJ. This fic meant a lot to me. I actually cried while writing. Read and enjoy? I think I'll be returning to my Flack/Lindsay roots soon, so be prepared.  
**Rating:** T

**Crash**

"_The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next."  
-Mignon McLaughlin_

He should be at home. He really should. But instead Flack's at a bar, drinking himself blind. He doesn't even remember the name of the place. It's not important, as long as it's not a cop bar. At one of those, everyone would know why he was drinking and the bartender wouldn't serve him as much Jack Daniels, and somebody would call Danny or Hawkes to take him home. But he doesn't want to go home, where his family is broken—oh Jesus Christ, his _family_—and where his wife is so sad these days she can barely move.

When he was younger he would always hear people say that parents should never outlive their children. It never made sense to him because he was so young, he didn't have kids and hey, who cares. Nothing is as certain as death and he supposed, even as young as he was then, that you just have to make do—you have to learn to deal with it, even if it was your kid. But now he has his own, a little girl and _fuck_ it hurts. Aiden Maria Flack. They named her in memory of the former CSI, and Maria for his mother.

A part of Flack thinks that naming her Aiden placed a curse on his daughter, a black cloud that hung over her until some nameless piece of scum headed for her and ended her life, just like DJ Pratt ended Aiden Burn's.

He stares into the amber depths of the glass, and remembers how they found her body. He wasn't even there but it was Danny (her godfather, good God) who drew her from the storm drain, cradling her body in his arms. Flack feels empty as he imagines Danny pulling her gently from the darkness. Christ, that's his _daughter_ and Stella said that Danny cried for hours afterwards, and he wonders what it means. It bothers him that he hasn't cried yet. He was the one that called Lindsay at home, brought her to the morgue. Flack held her as she fell to the floor, sobbing and crying for her baby, oh please baby girl, that can't be my Aiden.

His father told him lots of things, but he never told him how to prepare for something like this. The day that they found Aiden he went to him and asked why, why did someone take my baby girl away. His father didn't have any answers but took him instead to the home Flack lived in as a child, and Maria made him something to drink but he just sat there until the silence got too heavy. No one said anything because they just didn't know what to say. After all, how do you comfort someone who's falling apart?

At the funeral service there were pictures of his daughter, seven years old and all innocence. Look, just there; she's playing with the cat they bought May of '07. And another picture, her birthday; she's dressed like a mermaid, she's always loved those. And another, out in Montana visiting Lindsay's parents—Aiden's sitting in a wheatfield, smiling up at the camera. Oh God, that smile. He'll never see it again, will he? When it was his turn to speak, tell all who came about his girl, his little Ady, he couldn't. Flack couldn't even _speak_ and Lindsay had to lead him down and away, away from all the sympathetic looks and the tiny coffin and the tears.

For some reason Flack's always considered himself a brave man. He's been in shootouts, he's survived a bombing, and having served in Homicide for almost two decades of his life, he's seen a lot. But for some reason he can hardly find the courage to go on. He can't cry for his daughter and he can't stand to stay at home because there's too many memories. And there's Lindsay, who wants to help him, who wants to heal and be healed. She needs him and he knows that but Flack doesn't want to go home. All of Aiden's things are still there and he has her security blanket in his jacket pocket. It still smells like her, and part of him thinks that maybe this isn't real; maybe if he holds onto that blanket long enough, she'll come looking.

The bartender says no more and Flack barely acknowledges that Mac is helping him out of his seat, out of the bar. Somebody must've called, or maybe he gave the bartender his card. Sometimes he does that, gives the bartender a card with a number to call in case he gets too drunk. The ride home (oh no, not home, anywhere but there) is silent until Mac tells him it's not worth it.

"You lost your baby girl, Don, and that has to be hard. I can't even imagine. But it's not even worth it if you're pushing everyone away, even Lindsay. She needs you to make things right, so you go in there and you make it home for her again."

Before he makes his way up to the apartment—it seems bigger now, lonelier, without Aiden—he tells Mac to catch the son of a bitch that killed his daughter. And when Mac says, "We did, Don, we did," Flack's overcome with the greatest sense of gratitude he's ever felt in his whole life. He doesn't even know how to thank the CSI, and when Mac (knowing, somehow, what Flack was thinking) says thanks aren't necessary, he just nods and watches the car drive off into the distance.

He enters the apartment and the dimmed lights fall on faded flowers, cards expressing sympathy, and scattered toys. He picks up one of the toys—a stuffed Winnie the Pooh—and almost cries, almost, pulling it close to his chest. A noise, barely there, alerts him to Lindsay's presence in the room. She's leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen, face wan with tears and arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes are begging and he makes his way to her. Flack pulls Lindsay to him, the toy still in his grasp and as she clutches at him, tears falling, Flack finds himself starting to cry. It puzzles him at first, the wetness falling from his eyes onto her hair, but then he realizes it's sorrow, it's tears.

He breaks and asks her why. Why our girl, why Ady, why sexual assault and blunt force trauma to the head, why a storm drain? Lindsay doesn't know but she holds him, they hold each other and try to face the fact that they'll never know why. The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next, he realizes that now, and Flack guesses that for a long time it's going to be the only kind that's going to get him by.

_finis._


End file.
